


Never Let Go Again

by aboyandadream



Series: Iron Dad fics [2]
Category: Marvel
Genre: Tony is Peter's Dad, WARNING: it sucks, its a wee sad ig?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 19:31:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15154070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aboyandadream/pseuds/aboyandadream
Summary: Anonymous: A prompt: Peter coming back to life after the snap and Tony having the biggest breakdown about it cause when Peter was gone he found out he was his biological son??”





	Never Let Go Again

**Author's Note:**

> it's SO BAD
> 
> also this one is a little different from the one on tumblr because I edited this one on my laptop, whereas the one on tumblr was just written on my phone.

Tony was tired. He hadn’t slept properly in weeks, getting no more than an hour at a time before being awaken by the begging voice of that boy. The boy he was meant to protect, the boy he should have saved.  
  


_“Please, Mr. Stark, I don’t want to go.”_   
  


When he returned to Earth, he just wanted peace. Even just a day alone to grieve the loss of his Peter, but he knew he wasn’t the only one who lost him, and he couldn’t waste any time meant for saving Peter to stop and cry.  
  


Telling May her nephew was gone was the absolute last thing Tony wanted to do, but it was the first thing he had to do. He approached the apartment slowly, dread piling up more and more with each step he took towards her door. She threw the door open, praying it was Peter, but the second her eyes met his, he knew she knew.

_  
Before he could finish knocking on the door, it flew open. May stood there, disheveled with tear stains on her face, looking frantic._

 

_“Peter!” She exclaimed, only to meet the pained eyes of Tony Stark, and she knew._

_  
Her face fell into one of pure pain, curling in on herself to let out a choked sob. He was gone._

_  
“He’s gone, isn’t he?”_

_  
Tony blinked back the tears he himself had, nodding his head. “He,” he cleared his throat, trying to be rid of his broken voice, “He’s gone.”_

_  
It hurt so much more when he said it out loud, and he couldn’t stop the couple tears that managed to slip their way past his eyes. He knew it, hell, he watched it happen. But he hadn’t admitted it yet, now here he was, telling the only person who could truly understand the pain he felt that Peter was gone. If anything, he understood half of what she felt. Peter was his boy, but he was her family._

_  
She let him inside, and he expected her to yell at him or hit him, cuss him out, blame him, something, but it never came. She just cried, and eventually, he did too. May sobbed to herself, leaning back against the wall, holding herself. Tony stared at the framed picture of Peter in his academics jacket on the wall, smiling happily, looking so young and carefree. Tony stared at those happy eyes, trying to remember them that way as opposed to the scared apologetic ones from before, while tears left his own._

_  
“What happened?” May finally spoke, her voice so weak, so small._

_He led her to the table so they could sit, knowing both of them weren’t going to be able to hold themselves soon. He told her everything, how Peter joined the fight on his way back from a field trip, how he got dragged onto the ship, how he tried to get Peter off, tried to get him home, but Peter, stubborn, hard headed Peter, with the biggest heart he’s ever met, couldn’t stand back and let everyone else fight when he knew he could help. He told her about how they were so close to getting that stupid gauntlet off Thanos’ hand, and how Thanos took the time stone and left. When he began telling her about Peter’s death,_   _he broke._

_  
“Suddenly, people started turning to dust, or ash, or something that wasn’t them… Peter was fine at first, but then he started saying how he felt wrong, and he just,” he choked, a group of tears falling through with the jerk of his body, “he threw himself at me, begging me to help him, saying he didn’t want to go, and he apologized, he **apologized**! He  **begged**  me to help him and I couldn’t do anything, and  **he**  apologized to  **me**!”_

_  
Tony’s voice was gone at this point, his body was shaking and he couldn’t stop the tears. He never broke down, he had always been so good at holding it all in, but now it was too much. He lost Peter, the kid who looked up to him for so long, who he’d been trying to protect for the past two years, who he saw as a son. It was too much._

_  
He took a deep, shaky breath before continuing, “Steve said that, after Thanos snapped, people everywhere did it. Thanos said his plan was to get rid of half of the universe, to balance population and resources… Peter, Peter was part of that half.” He paused, needing to breathe again. “I swear to you, May, I won’t rest, and I will do everything I can to bring your boy back home to you.”_

_  
She stared at him, tears still glazing her eyes, and stood. She crossed the room to some old shoe box on the counter. “I found this a couple weeks ago… I was trying to find a way to get you alone. I guess now’s a good a time as any.”_

_  
She handed him a letter, feminine handwriting, addressed to May from her ‘beloved sister,’ as the note claimed. He read it, hands shaking more and more as he read each line. It was about Peter, when he was still just a baby, and how his mom loved his features, so unlike his dad’s. He read the last line over and over again, as though one of the times it would change, and he had just been reading it wrong._

**  
Each time I look at Peter, all I see is Tony.**

_  
“They were on a break, it only lasted a month before they got back together. During that break, she met a guy named Tony. They went out on a couple dates, hooked up a couple times, nothing major. They stopped seeing each other, and the break ended. She always had doubts about Peter’s dad, but when she saw him for the first time, I think she knew he was Tony’s. She never sent that letter to me; it was in one of the boxes they gave me when she passed. I never had the courage to read them until a few weeks ago.”_

_  
Tony put the letter down, putting a hand over his mouth._

_  
“I never knew what Tony’s last name was, but in that box, there’s a card to her signed ‘T.S.’ that probably came with some flowers or a gift. Figured T.S. was her Tony.” She placed a small, folded card on the table, the inside blank save for the initials spelled in familiar handwriting._

_  
He might be Peter’s dad? He hooked up with Peter’s mom, and then, potentially, fathered her boy?_

_  
Could Peter be_ his _Peter?_

_  
“Oh my god…” His voice was quiet, clutching that letter._

_  
“I was going to tell you, then Peter, and then maybe we could have done one of those paternity tests to be sure, but he’s gone now, and I don’t know what good it does, or what we could do-”_

_  
“Do you have his hairbrush?”_

  
They ran the test back at Tony’s lab, listening to FRIDAY confirm that Peter was, in fact, Tony’s son. His boy.

  
Just days ago, he would be leaping with joy. He wanted a son, and he had the best son in the world. He had Peter.

  
Now, however, he cried. He held onto a shirt that Peter had left when he had stayed overnight at the lab and poured his eyes out. He finally had the perfect son, and he lost him.

  
He lost his Peter.

—-

They did it.

  
He doesn’t know how they did it, and he didn’t believe that they did it, but they did it.

  
He was confused at first, not knowing what was happening, but then he saw Bucky Barnes fall into Steve’s arms and the talking raccoon run towards the talking tree, and he knew right away what was happening. He knew Peter would be back on Titan, stranded with the team of strangers who tried to kill him the second they met each other.

  
He gathered the talking raccoon, tree, and the blue girl who brought him back to Earth, as they were apparently part of the ‘guardians of the galaxy’ or whatever, and had them take him back to Titan. The whole way there he was urging them to go impossibly faster, to which the raccoon, Rocket, told him to hold his balls.

  
The ship slowly landed on the surface, and Tony literally begged the door to open faster. The second the door hit the ground, he saw him.

  
Just barely twenty yards from the base of the hatch, Peter stood, frightened eyes wide as they could possibly be.

  
Tony let out he most relieved sigh before running down the hatch and throwing his arms around Peter, holding the boy, his boy, to his chest. Peter clang back, letting out a muffled sound that almost sounded like a sob as he held onto Tony’s shirt, finding themselves in a position so strangely familiar to the one they were in the last time they saw each other. Tony swayed them ever so slightly, moving one hand to cup the back of Peter’s head and hold him to his chest.

  
“Oh  _Pete_ , Pete, you’re okay. You’re alright, god, you’re okay.” He mumbled into the side of Peter’s head, reassuring both of them that Peter was safe now, that he was going to be alright.

  
Tony felt his shoulder become damp with Peter’s tears, which soon made his own start to fall. His dream that he told Pepper about, about having a son, a beautiful, fantastic son, had already come true. He was here, in his arms, and he was safe.

  
His body shook as he let out a strangled sob, clutching Peter impossibly closer to his chest, letting himself break down. He let his tears fall as he ran a hand over the kid’s back, listening as Peter’s breath shook, his shoulders occasionally twitching when he let out a small sob of his own. Tony thought he was scared, carrying the fear of possibly never getting his boy back, but Peter? Peter died. He couldn’t imagine what went through his head, or the kind of fear that he must have felt. But he was safe now, he was going to be just fine. Tony finally had him back in his arms, and he swore to himself then that he’d never let something happen to his boy again.

  
“Thank you, Mr. Stark.” His voice was weak, strained from his soft cries into Tony’s shoulder. Tony shook his head, shushing Peter and running his hand through the boy’s hair.

  
“C’mon, kid. Let’s get you home.”

—-

Reuniting Peter with Aunt May almost made Tony cry again. Watching the relieved look on her face as he wrapped his arms around her, promising her that he was alright and home. May even opened her arms and demanded that Tony joined in, thanking him repeatedly for bringing her boy home.

  
After a few days of adjusting and settling in, Tony asked Peter if he’d like to spend some time over at the lab with him, claiming he missed his favorite lab partner. Aunt May sent him off with a kiss on the forehead, letting Happy walk with him to the car (May and Tony agreed that it was best to not let Peter be alone for too long, both of them being worried about his well being. Peter appreciated it, but at the same time, what was going to happen on the walk from his door to the car?) and drive him to the lab.

  
“Hiya, Pete.” Tony smiled at the boy as he approached, patting his shoulder as he wrapped an arm around him.

  
“Hey, Mr. Stark.” Peter smiled back, walking with him to the lab. They made small talk, Peter telling him all about the new lego set he worked on with Ned the day before. Tony nodded along, a fond look on his face, happy that Pete was able to do easily get back into the swing of things.

  
They reached the lab and Tony stepped to the side, picking up a file from a counter top and waving Peter over. “C’mere kid, I want you to look over these lab results I got. Thought you’d find them cool.”

  
Peter gladly accepted the file, opening it up and reading through it. His face became confused, slowly reading the circled line out loud.

  
“The alleged father is not excluded as the biological father of the tested child. Based on testing results obtained from analysis of the DNA loci tested, the chances of probability of paternity is 99.998%.  _Tony Stark can not be excluded from the possible paternity of Peter Parker._ ” He looked up at Tony, confusion and shock on his face. “What does this mean?”

  
“It means,” Tony started, trying to keep his smile down in case Peter wasn’t as happy as he was about the results, “That I’m your dad, Pete.”

  
Peter’s face switched from confusion to excitement, eyes widening, a smile slowly stretching across his face. “Really?”

  
Tony nodded, letting his smile stretch across his face. “Really.”

  
“W-wha-um-what? How?” Peter was practically bouncing, eyebrows scrunched together in wonder. “My parents were married?”

  
“Apparently,” Tony started, rocking back on his feet, “they took a short break, and during that break, your mom and I had some kinda relationship. And, well, here we are.”

  
He took his hands out of his pockets, spreading his arms open to emphasis the last sentence, not expecting it when Peter flung himself into Tony’s arms. He stumbled a bit in surprise, but quickly wrapped his arms around the boy, squeezing him tight. He felt Peter laugh against his shoulder and pulled back, giving him a confused look.

  
“What’s so funny, kid?”

  
“Y’know Mr. Stark…  _Dad_ , you’re really getting ahold of this whole hugging thing.” Peter laughed, taking a step back a bit and letting his arms fall.

  
Tony huffed out a laugh, rolling his eyes. “Don’t push your luck kid.”

  
But really, Tony’s heart skipped a beat hearing Peter call him Dad. It was a sound he wanted to hear played on repeat forever - he’d never get over how it sounds. It felt so nice to not only have Peter back, but to have his son back. And while he rolled his eyes at Peter, he knew now that whenever Peter tried to hug him, he’d never turn him down again. He had Peter back now, and he’d never let him go again.

**Author's Note:**

> it's SO BAD


End file.
